1964 – An Overture to introduce my new owner

I think it was Hans Keller (one of my previous owners), and before him, Oskar Adler, who said that it is important for composers to be aware of the ‘background’ to their work as much as the ‘foreground’. So, I now want to play a Prelude – an Overture – in order to fill in the ‘background music’ to the life and being of my new young owner who brought me out of the darkness of Hill’s basement in September 1964. It was Harvey Richardson who was now to begin the longest relationship I have ever had, with anybody.

(John Richardson [far left] and Chrissie Richardson [front, left], 1900)

By the way Harvey treats me, I am aware of a very sensitive young person with a strong musical approach to life, especially in the way he gives expression to his thoughts and those things which have deep meaning.  We know that his father’s family line included violinists/preachers John (great-grandfather) and Isaac Richardson (great-great-uncle), but we also know that on his mother’s side of the family has a very strong Welsh influence.  I was especially aware of this at the Crystal Palace Welsh Singing Festival of 1872, and in 1880, Harvey’s great-great grandfather John Jones was reported to have had a ‘mellifluous Welsh voice’.

Harvey traces some of his individual musical origins back to ‘Prep’ School – Kingsfield School, Oxhey, near Watford – when, at the age of 8 he conducted the school percussion band.  At a special schools’ musical competition held in the Great Hall of the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, London (where the United Nations was inaugurated in 1948), Harvey led the School Band to ‘victory’, winning in their category to great acclaim and applause! 

Other origins include the long-established family habit of meeting at Grandma Pratt’s flat on Sunday evenings, and gathering around the piano. Harvey enjoyed singing from a very young age, and the Choir at Queen’s Road Methodist Church, the Sunday School and other church functions provided ample opportunity to make music of all kinds.  Also, the presence of a Bluthner ‘Baby Grand’ piano at home brought many other opportunities for music-making,

(‘Hiawatha’ at the Royal Albert Hall 1928)

Harvey’s mother Gladys had admired the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor from an early age, ever since attending Malcolm Sargent’s performances of ‘Hiawatha’ at the Royal Albert Hall in the 1920s.  There is no doubt that Gladys’ approach to, and love of music of all kinds, had a bearing upon Harvey’s growing passion for a ‘musical’ understanding of life, from his earliest years.

Harvey’s grandma Chrissie Richardson (nee Lighbody) had been a fine pianist too, giving Leslie the very occasional opportunity to play his favourite Mozart with great precision and deliberation.  But this was a rarity in the Richardson house.

‘Noyes Fludde’, original production 1958)

Singing in the choir and playing in the school orchestra at John Lyon’s became an increasingly significant part of Harvey’s musical development. In 1960 he was chosen to sing the part of Ham in Benjamin Britten’s new composition ‘Noye’s Fludde’ in St Mary’s Church, Harrow.  The school orchestra played pieces such as Weinberger’s ‘Schwanda the Bagpiper’ and Georges Bizet’s ‘L’Arlesienne’ suite, and all the boys were full of admiration for Michael Rose who – more than once – wrote original pieces composed specifically for the school.  On one occasion they performed Five short pieces by Anton von Webern – a very bold and rare choice!  Also, as we noted last time, Mr Boyd Campbell (the headmaster) introduced him, as a sixth-former, to that earth-shattering book by J A T Robinson – ‘Honest to God’ – which attempted to explain the thinking of modern theologians Karl Barth, Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann.  Perhaps Michael Rose’s introduction of modern music by Webern had a similar impact to Mr Campbell’s introduction to the famous book by the Bishop of Woolwich.

Another important influence for Harvey was a school visit to Austria, in the spring of 1963. This included the opportunity of attending a rehearsal by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra with the legendary Hans Knappertsbusch conducting Anton Bruckner’s 4^th Symphony.

(Hans Knappertsbusch)

When I rehearse the multitude of my own events, experiences and emotions of the past as recorded throughout this Diary so far, I find a fertile sonic ‘space’ opening up, as Harvey’s body and my body are now ready to resonate together.  I’m reminded of a suggestion by a present-day Luthier who insists that God is waiting to be played and sounded from within our bodies.  ‘Make me an instrument of God’s love’ he says, mis-quoting St Francis of Assisi.  Was Harvey being prepared, prior to our meeting, for us to meet and make music which might have profound spiritual meaning and purpose?

It’s also worth asking if it is possible for identifiable characteristics to be passed down through generations, like DNA?  Has great-grandfather John’s fiddle playing in Norfolk reached Harvey in any way, for example?  Certainly, my own story is laced with examples of how particular gestures, ‘stimmung’, emotional and musical nuances, can make an indelible impression carried through succeeding generations.

As the relationship between Music and Theology is a central theme in my story, I can’t help looking for connections which address the subject of the ‘divine‘, and the presence of God. As the years go by, I am more and more drawn to the idea of God being found in fluid and flowing influences and relationships, rather than in static images or concepts.  Is Christ’s bodily incarnation present in our bodies waiting to become a sonic expression of God?

In our understanding of creation, could there be a musical ‘flow‘, or an all-pervading ‘flux’, originating from a fluid God-relationship, which enters into human lives and which affects human characteristics and human behavioural traits‘?  Something which flows through multiple generations, transcending time and space?  Something which is close to the word ‘spirit‘?